Fighting Ad Blockers With Captcha Ads 450
krou writes "Living in an ad-free internet thanks to ad blockers? That could be a thing of the past if software firm NuCaptcha has their way by making captchas into ads. 'Instead of the traditional squiggly word that users have to decipher, the new system shows them a video advert with a short message scrolling across it. The user has to identify and retype part of the message to proceed. Companies including Electronic Arts, Wrigley and Disney have already signed up.'"
I'm not worried. (Score:3, Interesting)
A sure-fire way to make me HATE your product (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, this is going to endear me to EA and Disney - basically not only making me wait through an ad, but FORCING me to pay attention to it.
Re:A sure-fire way to make me HATE your product (Score:5, Insightful)
You ever watched a Disney DVD or video? Their entire business is based around making you watch ads for their own products.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
I generally play DVDs with mplayer, which happily skips past all that junk. I've seen a few Disney movies on VHS some years back, but that had rewinding.
Re:A sure-fire way to make me HATE your product (Score:4, Insightful)
Ocassionally I do watch trailers, when I'm interested in finding something new to watch. But what I'll do is rewinding a few seconds into it to skip past the titles, take a quick look to see if it looks interesting, if so rewind back, and if not skip to the next one. So an unskippable one would still annoy the heck out of me.
Some ads are indeed a work of art, like the car ad with the rube goldberg machine made from pieces. But I don't remember which company it was for, and don't particularly care about what's it advertising. When I buy a car, I'll still come up with a price I'm willing to pay, the features I need, find every model that matches those requirements then pick something from there.
Re:A sure-fire way to make me HATE your product (Score:4, Insightful)
What determines how much you are willing to pay? How do you determine which features are must-have? If you think those decisions are not being constantly manipulated by others, guess again.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
What determines how much you are willing to pay? How do you determine which features are must-have? If you think those decisions are not being constantly manipulated by others, guess again.
If I did that, I'd want car with two seats but a lot of luggage space, with just enough torque to get around UK B-roads at a sensible pace, that was priced at cost plus a sensible margin, and weighed less than 1000kg. In fact there are a large number of households that should want this as a perfect second car. There is no such car even though it's perfectly possible to engineer one. What does that tell you about consumer choice?
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
> What does that tell you about consumer choice?
That most consumers choose what they want, not what you think they should have.
Re:A sure-fire way to make me HATE your product (Score:5, Insightful)
Not quite. Most consumers choose the smallest evil. It's not like you really have a choice anymore, what you really want rarely gets made.
Else everyone with half a brain would buy DVD players that let you skip ads or make digital copies of your DVDs. They don't exist. Why don't they exist, it's exactly what the customer wants.
It's because you're just the consumer. Not the customer.
Re:A sure-fire way to make me HATE your product (Score:5, Informative)
Re: (Score:3)
'd want car with two seats but a lot of luggage space, with just enough torque to get around UK B-roads at a sensible pace, that was priced at cost plus a sensible margin, and weighed less than 1000kg.
Daihatsu sirion? 1 litre version has a Kerb weight of 890kg, and being front wheel drive can deal with B roads as well as many rear-wheel drive cars.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
The amount of money I have, mostly, and my long term plans. For instance, do I see myself using public transport every day and only using the car ocassionally, or will it be a workhorse?
Price/performance ratio, my own testing.
Do I need AC? Living in a place where 35C (95F) is a common temperature, yeah, I do. The heat turns my brain to mush.
Do I need leather seats? Well, that's more debatable. I'd look at how m
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
My budget, which is basically my income minus expenditures (which includes savings, charitable contributions etc).
Research, which includes reading manuals and spec sheets, reviews from a variety of sources, physically appraising the quality and workmanship of the product I'm interested in and speaking with people I know who have made similar purchases. Watching paid advertisements is not performing research.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
And mafiosos can be seen as parasites or they can be seen as honest businessmen refusing to bow down to oppressive Government-maintained monopoly on taxes, violence and coercion.
Marketers, you are scum. Sorry. That's just a fact.
Re:A sure-fire way to make me HATE your product (Score:4, Funny)
As a human being, you need to fight this impulse.
It's like drinking poison because it tastes really really good.
Advertising is murder.
Re:A sure-fire way to make me HATE your product (Score:4, Interesting)
Well, take this one [youtube.com] for instance. Who cares what's it advertising? It's one of those things that's just great for showing people and watching their reaction.
Re:A sure-fire way to make me HATE your product (Score:4, Funny)
And the general reaction is "what the fuck?"? I'm not really sure what I just saw, but I think it was a mixture of CGI animals edging on pornography, and a mid 50's Carmen Miranda musical.
It may have had something to do with orange juice.
Re: (Score:2)
And here I thought their business was based on, I don't know, selling those DVDs. :P
Re:A sure-fire way to make me HATE your product (Score:5, Insightful)
You ever watched a Disney DVD or video? Their entire business is based around making YOUR KIDS watch ads for their own products.
Fixed that for you.
Kids - the advertiser's force multiplier.
Still, as bad as Disney is, they're not as bad as the low-rent scum like Nickelodeon. Seriously - as kid's TV goes, PBS is tops, Disney is second, everything else is utter crap.
Re:A sure-fire way to make me HATE your product (Score:5, Informative)
IMO, Disney is worse than Nick.
The devious angle of Disney is that it is absolutely and entirely "Family Friendly", i.e. no sex, no drugs, no violence, no blood, no gore, no ... ok, almost I'd have said no fun. But you get the idea. It is something you can park your kids in front without fearing the question "Daddy, what's that red stuff coming out of kitty's ears?" Disney managed to get a reputation as a company offering non-threatening entertainment, suitable for children. You can hand over your kids and we'll take good care of them. Ages 0 to god-knows.
And parents do just that.
With Nick, at least halfway responsible parents (today an oxymoron, I know, I know...) will review once in a while just what kind of junk they broadcast. Let's be honest here, some of the Anime I get through Nick is anything but "suitable for kids", whether you look at the content or the topics, it's not really something a person younger than 8 could understand. They also don't pretend to be your perfect babysitter, they just offer kids' entertainment.
IMO, the Disney angle is worse.
They seem to be missing the point. (Score:3, Insightful)
Advertising exists in order to create a demand for stuff people don't need.
People already know they need food, water and shelter. Nobody needs a steak from Outback or a new Disney toy.
They can't "force" anybody to do anything and if viewing specific content requires watching an ad, then I guess they'll have to get along without my business.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
I watch Disney Video often, but I never see the forced ad's...
It's because all DVD's and BluRays that come into my home are required to run through handbrake and into a mp4 file before they can be watched. This strips out all the advertising crap and means the discs are left in a like new condition in the storage cabinet in the basement. Kids and other never touch the discs.
I did watch a DVD at a friends last week and was disgusted at the nearly 15 minutes of forced crap on the disc.... even the STOP-ST
Re:A sure-fire way to make me HATE your product (Score:5, Funny)
Seeing as Disney is a member of the MPAA, it's probably a very bad idea to ask questions along the lines of "Would (insert insignificant change) really kill you?".
The chances are you'll get a diatribe about how yes, it would kill them - complete with an advertising campaign to tell the world, forced ads in DVDs and at the cinema, notices on DVDs sold only to non-US markets full of how copying is a "federal offence" and various attempts - some more dubious than others - to "persuade" politicians to pass legislation making it illegal to use the DVD in anything other than the prescribed manner.
When that is clearly taking too long, the next Media Storage Product (tm) will be developed - and the Old Media Storage Product will be quietly discontinued as quickly as market forces will allow. Naturally it'll be patented into the middle of the 23rd century, and a condition of licensing the patents will be that every developer, every engineer who's involved in implementing the product will be taken outside and shot when the product reaches market.
Doubtless some clever so-and-so will reverse engineer the product, but the combination of patent requirements and the legislation (which, while all the reverse-engineering was going on, finally passed! Yay!) mandating the death penalty for not only the person doing the reverse engineering but also for their friends, their family, everyone they've ever worked with, their dog and the guy they don't really know but he came around to fix the heating last week will do a reasonably efficient job of ensuring that the ability to Do What You Want with the Media You Damn Well Purchased, TYVM is limited to such a small fraction of society that they can be safely ignored.
All this because you asked Disney if it would be too much to let customers decide whether or not they want to watch trailers.
(Well, if you're going to do hyperbole, do it properly!).
Re:A sure-fire way to make me HATE your product (Score:4, Insightful)
It's an appeal to the authoritarian personality [wikipedia.org]. Some people really like being told what to do, and will respect a brand that makes them do uncomfortable things. Hm... or is that called BDSM [wikipedia.org]? Meh, same difference.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
A lot of people seem to block ads because they're too pushy and annoying. This goes too far. If it was just an image ad, then it wouldn't be so bad. I tend to block ads because they're video (on a largely static site), ugly, offensive, make noise or are otherwise excessively distracting. The site owners might not be in much position to make demands to advertisers, but it seems like they shouldn't be going along with these schemes that really dilute the quality of their content.
Re:A sure-fire way to make me HATE your product (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm pretty sure I've said this at least one occasion before on /., but it bears repeating.
I wouldn't turn ads off if they weren't so idiotic, invasive, and everywhere.
Half of the websites I use are significantly faster because my browser isn't loading 8 flash instances for one page for all of the ads.
Then there's the ads that try and make themselves look like they're part of the site you're visiting to intentionally bait you into clicking on them.
Why not actually try and sell me shit I might actually want to buy, with tasteful or even funny ads that actually convey something about the product I might be interested in?
Re:A sure-fire way to make me HATE your product (Score:5, Interesting)
Because then I would cry bloody murder, since to target ads you first of all have to find out more about me than I'm willing to give to advertising companies.
Also, tasteful, inoffensive ads are considered "worthless" by advertisers because they, well, they are tasteful and inoffensive, they get overlooked and are easily forgotten.
Instead, they try to force ads onto us. Ignoring the old tale of sun and wind competing over who can make a man take off his coat (in a nutshell, wind tries to blow it off the guy but he only pulled it tighter around his body, while sun shined and convinced the guy by giving him what he wanted, i.e. warmth, that the coat is unnecessary), which fits more aptly here than anywhere else: Ads have to give you what you want! Else they may be as invasive as can be, they will still not result in the desired spectator action: Going out and buying whatever is advertised. Worse, an invasive ad for a product I might want to have will immediately receive a negative reaction because it interrupted whatever else I wanted to do at the time, or, worse, startled me and hence got connected with a negative emotion, something that it entirely deadly for any kind of advertising.
A good ad would do both: Be noticable, but not distracting and not a roadblock on my way to the content I wanted. Pop-unders are already a pretty good solution, since you get to notice them once you are done looking at the content you wanted to see, are in a relaxed mood and maybe open to look at something else.
Personally, I think advertisers who think that cramming stuff down my throat think pretty lowly of their own product. It almost seems like they themselves would not want it, so they assume you have to sell it hard so anyone would would at least "accidently" buy it.
Re:A sure-fire way to make me HATE your product (Score:5, Insightful)
Don't forget the unscrupulous ad rotator "services" which allow their clients randomly drop ads with malicious JavaScript or Flash code, and do it in a way where the same IP and machine signature isn't hit twice.
I'm sorry, until ad spewing companies stop being an enabler to botnet installs, compromised code and machine infections, I will continue to make sure their stuff gets blocked. This is a security issue, plain and simple.
Re:A sure-fire way to make me HATE your product (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
I block ads because they're in flash
What do you plan to do once ads start to be delivered through HTML5 instead of SWF? This is already happening: see cpalead.
Re: (Score:2)
Yes, this is going to endear me to EA and Disney - basically not only making me wait through an ad, but FORCING me to pay attention to it.
What it's going to do is force me to avoid any and all EA & Disney ads (and anyone else who pulls this shit). Pages are chock full of ads, some sites put a paragraph on each page and force users to find it amongst the advertising. I'll skip any site that uses this because there's nothing on the internet I need or want bad enough that I'll be forced to watch their ad and take a test at the end of it. Not gonna happen.
Shrinking Your Market (Score:5, Insightful)
No thanks (Score:5, Insightful)
If I see one of these, I think I'll just go somewhere else. It'd have to be something really compelling to make me endure that kind of abuse.
Re:No thanks (Score:5, Interesting)
Really? Even if these captchas actually turn out easier to use than the current ones? I mean no more guesstimating which bit of what overlapping miscoloured squiggles belong to which potential letters (and is that a 1 or an l? O or 0?), just a quick message and an easily identifiable word within it.
Or, to rephrase the question: would you oppose the system if it wasn't about ads but just another innovation in captchas? Assuming, of course, that this innovation does actually make captchas less of a hassle. Just sayin' that this isn't necessarily bad and you might find that the benefits outweigh the agony of having to listen to an ad message (is that really so bad?).
Personally though, I don't think it's going to work, neither as an ad nor as a captcha. If it's based on videos with meaningful messages (ads!), the possibilities for remixing and regenerating random captchas is going to be severely limited. Which means it will take no time at all until someone has built a plugin that builds a database of these and simply looks up the correct answer in the background.
Re:No thanks (Score:5, Insightful)
Really.
Probably not. It's the advertising angle that's offensive.
Also, normal use of captchas works to my advantage, like helping ensure every third comment isn't an ad for Viagra. That I can cooperate with.
Re:No thanks (Score:5, Insightful)
Indeed. I find it highly ironic that what we have here is a method to prevent advertising being used as an advertising medium.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Please enter the two words seen below:
H3rb4L V149r4
Re: (Score:2)
Or, to rephrase the question: would you oppose the system if it wasn't about ads but just another innovation in captchas?.
lol. Video that I probably can't see without a working plug-in (and don't tell me "It's flash," that's why I don't have much luck with YouTube ... yay for HTML5). On my flaky high-bandwidth connection that can barely chug down a YouTube video.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Really? Even if these captchas actually turn out easier to use than the current ones? I mean no more guesstimating which bit of what overlapping miscoloured squiggles belong to which potential letters (and is that a 1 or an l? O or 0?), just a quick message and an easily identifiable word within it.
Yes, really. How long do think it's gonna be before they make it hard to get the right answer to force you to watch it again (or a different one).
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Who said anything about quick? 5 second ad, maybe I would tolerate it. But I imagine initially they will be short but progressively lengthen as people get use to them to epic advertising miniseries where the ad is longer then the video you wanted to watch.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Who said anything about quick? 5 second ad, maybe I would tolerate it. But I imagine initially they will be short but progressively lengthen as people get use to them to epic advertising miniseries where the ad is longer then the video you wanted to watch.
"Please enter the license plate of the gorgeous sleek black BMW that appeared after our hero, Stu Studly, rescued the girl from the clutches of the evil Dr. Domestic."
Re: (Score:2)
If it's a preview ad or any other marketing crap that makes you wait, absolutely. But I like their "basic" captcha (http://www.nucaptcha.com/products/basic). Even if it had a Coke can in the background.
I'm sick and tired of squinting and trying to figure out whether it's an 'n' or an 'r' merged into the next letter. All on a lovely hatched background. The basic examples show clearly recognizable text where the obfuscation is done through movement and selecting the word by color.
Of course the other facto
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
It'd have to be something really compelling to make me endure that kind of abuse.
You mean, like ... porn?
Proxy? (Score:2)
If using adblocking software is the only way that people keep their web interface clear of bandwidth stealing ads, then they might have a small problem. Using a proxy and completely blocking the entire ad domain is a great solution, and easy for the average user to do.
Re:Proxy? (Score:4, Insightful)
ads don't make you buy stuff... (Score:3, Interesting)
...your lack of self-control, willpower, and independent thought makes you buy stuff after seeing an ad.
And because adverts essentially prey on weakness and are almost universally designed to mislead, it is quite simple to set your policy to being discouraged by any ad you see from purchasing from the sponsor.
So, it's advert blocking all the way, and anything which manages to slip through is avoided with extreme prejudice.
Also, don't forget that the real word in recaptcha is always "faeces". Stop doing free work for the biggest polluter of the Internet with adverts.
Re:ads don't make you buy stuff... (Score:5, Insightful)
Ads mostly exist to put their brand name in front of your eyeballs.
Later on, when you're out buying some stuff, you need some $foo. You see two packages, brand X and brand Y. You have seen X before, but Y is entirely unfamiliar to you. So you buy X. What you don't remember at the moment is that only reason why X is familiar is because you've seen it in ads.
Re: (Score:2)
This is just another trend in ad-blocking blocking. I have already seen a few webs where the important text is enclosed in DIVs and the like so it won't show up if yo
Re:ads don't make you buy stuff... (Score:5, Funny)
>> and are almost universally designed to mislead
Well the laugh is on you buddy, because I just bought a six-pack of Bud Light, and any minute now a bikini-clad model is going to show up at my house to have baby oil rubbed all over her chest.
Re:ads don't make you buy stuff... (Score:5, Insightful)
ads don't make you buy stuff...your lack of self-control, willpower, and independent thought makes you buy stuff
It's not that simple. It has been scientifically proven that when seeing certain ads multiple times, even not consciously, can result in people having a positive opinion on a product. They forget the source of their opinion is actually an advertisement.
At first, I used ad blockers because of their distraction. Now, I use them mainly because I don't want marketeers pilfering in my mind.
Source: Hawks in sheep's clothing [psychologytoday.com].
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
"universally designed to mislead, it is quite simple to set your policy"
One line, you say we're incapable of independent thought and have weak willpower, then in another suggest that we use our strong willpower to consciously set effective policies even though you claim that an article showing that ads effect the unconscious in ways that we cannot control.
fine (Score:3, Insightful)
If a site is too obnoxious, i will just avoid it completely.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
They might be perfectly happy with that. A user who uses resources (bandwidth) without providing income (ad/payment) may be one they don't really care about losing.
I've built a couple of websites that block ad-blocking users. They are comparatively low volume, and low profile unless you are working in the specialised area. They are however in fields where advertising is comparatively profitable. It would be much easier to get past my method than
Not necessarily true (Score:3, Insightful)
If I have an ad-paid site, I wouldn't mind ad-blockers visiting. The theory is that if they enjoy the site, it's likely they'll spread the news to people who don't block ads. They tell people, link to it on their blogs and Facebook, etc. Thus even the people who don't make me more money directly would be making me more money indirectly. Bandwidth is cheap compared to the cost of wo
Re:fine (Score:4, Funny)
If a site is too obnoxious, i will just avoid it completely.
yet here you are, reading slashdot replies...
If we are reading... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
If the scrolling text is also an advertisement then you are still advertised at.
Gee. Another website I can live without (Score:4, Interesting)
My response will be simple.
Here's another website I can live without. There are very, very few site I frequent that I honestly need (my webmail, and... and... I'll think of something).
Seriously, I would expect these to be traffic killers.
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
I have the same reaction to those ads that underline random words with some JavaScript stuff. I avoid The Inquirer and Phoronix because they use this form of advertising. The Inquirer used to be one of my news feeds, so they'd get me reading half a dozen or so articles a day. Putting in these ads made me delete them and I've not visited the site since then.
I probably wouldn't mind if they'd highlight relevant words, but when they're making things like 'software' and 'smartphone' the context words for
Re:Gee. Another website I can live without (Score:5, Informative)
whenever i encounter these javascript underlining thing adds, i will stop at NOTHING untill all relevant hosts have been included in my hosts file, pointing to good ol 127.0.0.1
it usually takes a few minutes/tries to find all relevant add-servers in the resources list for a web-page, but i find it is worth the effort
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
since i prefer not to run my browser as root (and keep my /etc unmoddifiable to my own user), i'd rather not have that feature
but yeah, for windows users, this might be a usefull idea
Oh well... (Score:2)
EA and Disney have already been on my "No Buy" list for several years. I'll just add any site using this bletcherous garbage to my "No visit" list as well.
They want me on their site right? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
1) The page has a video that is set to auto-play (even though you may not have come to the page for that video)
2) The video starts with an advertisement which disables the pause button
Best example of this is the page for House (the Fox show). I go there to check if I missed a show, not to see a preview. Instead it immediately plays a loud, unstoppable ad every time you go there. Thankfully there's Wikipedia.
Too many moving parts. (Score:3, Informative)
This will backfire. Too many moving parts to do it's functional job effectively. If a video captcha was a good solution it would already be in use. Making the video an advert won't help. It probably won't hurt but that's beside the point. People will try a few times then give up and start complaining. Captchas are annoying enough already.
Hello, I am now aware of your $PRODUCT_X (Score:3)
To everyone posting "We'll go elsewhere" (Score:4, Insightful)
Yes and no (Score:5, Insightful)
The original poster is wrong. They do care, and you are wrong, because they care for the wrong reason.
The problem is that advertisers sell ads, not the product they are advertising. Ads themselves are the product advertising companies like the one in this article are selling. Those who buy ads are often as bamboozled as ordinary consumers with statistics made up on the spot being sold as facts.
At the core is a fundemental believe that ads work. This is not suprising since ads themselves often work on certain base believes. That a smell will attract scores of women. That cars are driven on open roads with not another car insight.
In this fantasy world, the idea that people REALLY DO NOT FUCKING WANT TO SEE YOUR GODDAMNED AD doesn't exist. And partly they are right. All those annoying flash ads? They work. They sell the product behind them. So naturally if you can make your ad even more annoying, even more intrusive, surely that would mean even bigger results?
And here the flaw comes in: Human beings operate on the "straw that broke the camels back" principle. They got a high tolerance but when it is broken it is completly gone. If you block ads because of the most annoying flash ad ever, you will block every ad from there on. Even the nicest completly unobstrusive ad.
But then these companies wonder why you ain't watching their nice ad. And want a solution.
Advertising is totally unregulated industry and they are paying the price for it. Ad blockers once installed don't care about relevancy or niceness of an ad. Block it all because some monkey ad broke the users back.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
goes against basic ad psychology (Score:5, Insightful)
an advertisement is essentially a form of seduction. that's why sex figures so large in advertising. you are trying to entice someone into buying your product, to woo them to come hither
so when you intrusively force someone to view your ad, you've just completely destroyed the psychology of what makes any advertisement work
you have in fact performed a pavlovian experiment: you've force someone into an unpleasant experience, then associated that unpleasant experience with your brand name. much as with pavlov's dogs who started salivating whenever they heard a bell because you always played a bell before feeding them, forced viewing associates the unpleasurable feeling of coercion with your brand name and products
so all these idiots have done is perfected the art of anti-advertising, of driving people away from your product
just make the ad nonintrusive, and anyone who is predisposed to your product might click. that's the best you can do. anything more intrusive simply destroys your brand name with the pavlovian association as described above
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Re:goes against basic ad psychology (Score:5, Insightful)
So you're saying that this is more like rape than like seduction?
Re:goes against basic ad psychology (Score:4, Insightful)
an advertisement is essentially a form of seduction. that's why sex figures so large in advertising. you are trying to entice someone into buying your product, to woo them to come hither
Sex figures large in advertising because it works, not because of any supposed parallel to sexual seduction. We look at sexual images because our brains want us to do that, it's a survival mechanism.
so when you intrusively force someone to view your ad, you've just completely destroyed the psychology of what makes any advertisement work
That's total bullshit, because advertisements work by increasing your familiarity with a product or trademark.
you have in fact performed a pavlovian experiment: you've force someone into an unpleasant experience, then associated that unpleasant experience with your brand name.
Unfortunately studies show that even these unpleasant experiences can increase purchases. The event was so trivial that you don't remember it when you go to make a purchase.
so all these idiots have done is perfected the art of anti-advertising, of driving people away from your product
Since even advertising like this works, I suspect that you are the idiot.
Oh do stop complaining (Score:5, Insightful)
Its about time that a lot of people on slashdot realised that money doesn't grow on trees and what they enjoy on the net eventually has to be paid for by someone. If putting up with a short advert means I can continue to enjoy a lot of free sites then thats fine by me and I suspect a lot of other people.
Re:Oh do stop complaining (Score:5, Insightful)
It sounds like you're assuming everyone here blocks every ad they come across. I respect that the people running sites I enjoy visiting want/need to turn a profit but I want those sites to respect me as well. Some ads are so obnoxious they overshadow the very content that got me to the site in the first place and those are the ones I block.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
It's about time that people on slashdot realized that we are not sheep to be fleeced and slaughtered by corporate overlords.
"Respect" is a two way street and usually starts by the corporate overlord not being an abusive jerk to begin with.
Commercial blocking techniques usually start and gain popularity because of advertisers being abusive jerks.
Re:Oh do stop complaining (Score:5, Insightful)
A *SHORT* Advert, meaning what?
A static image. A basic block of text. These will not be blocked by me. Jumping things. Blinking things. Moving things. Things that BLOCK the site I'm trying to read... those will go into the bit-bucket EVERY time.
Static images and blocks of text have actually led me to click them. Score 1 for tasteful advertisements.
Re:Oh do stop complaining (Score:4, Insightful)
And don't forget the ones that make freaking noise when I've loaded the page into another tab to be read a few minutes later. Those are the ones that will get me to stop what I'm doing and update my custom ad blocker configuration (I use a hand-edited CSS configuration for blocking) so that nothing from the domain that served the ads (as in doubleclick, etc.) will ever be loaded by my browser ever again.
In fact, I find it both interesting and amusing when I get an ad that isn't blocked, and isn't annoying either.
Anyone got a list of sites signing up for this? (Score:5, Insightful)
When mega rich multinational megacorps stop STEALING ALL MY BANDWIDTH then maybe I'll think about buying their product.
MAYBE.
Actively going out of your way to piss off your customers is NOT a good business model - one day you will learn.
It seems like a good way (Score:2)
to drive people away from your website.
Accessibility? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Accessibility? (Score:4, Informative)
Squeezing the Balloon on Ad Views (Score:2)
Do any owners (as in humans) of sites signing up for this personally use Web browsers to consume news and other data? Forcing acknowledgment of an ad view may increase the views per site visitor, but the number of site visitors is going to plummet. It is almost as bad as a paywall, and we have already seen how well that is working out for content owners.
Wow, even more crap that requires flash? (Score:2)
Re:Wow, even more crap that requires flash? (Score:5, Funny)
"You need the latest version of Flash to view this captcha, to sign up for our website, to register your product, to download the update, to fix the problem that we shipped it with. Please download and run this executable now."
Not a new Thing (Score:2)
Stupid move (Score:2, Informative)
If the owners of a website are willing to get paid for using a CAPTCHA system, then I guess they're also willing to lose most of their users because of it.
There are other methods [xkcd.org] to keep your website clean.
Why bother? (Score:3, Interesting)
At that point, why not just go ahead and use a paywall?
Anything so interesting that I'm willing to spend my attention span deactivating the advertisement filter (hint: not much, with so many free alternatives for content) and paying attention would probably be worth paying to see. And any payment I'm willing to make, no matter how small, is likely to exceed the pittance a single ad impression (even a verified one) is worth.
What about 56k? (Score:3, Insightful)
ad-blockers that register a click (Score:2)
Intrusive ads.. (Score:3, Informative)
I block video ads because the ones that make sound are far too intrusive (and hard to track down if you have lots of tabs open) and pop-up ads...
I don't really mind small graphical or text based ads, and still have ads on slashdot despite being given the option to turn them off.
The more intrusive ads become, the more likely i am to block them and avoid the sites which show them.
I especially hate the video ads that are on failblog these days, they force you to sit through the same advertisement for every video you watch, and the ads are full videos 30 seconds to a minute in length wasting your bandwidth and quite often are for a product not even being sold here.
Toxic Advertising (Score:5, Insightful)
Seriously, who is not getting this message? Why do ad-blockers exist at all?
How about finding a new revenue stream that doesn't annoy me to the point where I get off my ass and do something about it!
Good luck with that (Score:4, Informative)
My general rule is that if I have to take my hand off the mouse to view your content, I'm going elsewhere. I'll even put up with short interstitials, but I don't do quizzes.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
I think something was lost in translation (Score:3, Funny)
I don't think that the intent is to make you watch a video ad. I think what they want to do is make you get past a video captcha to prove you're not a bot. Then, the website owner can be assured that his content is being viewed only by humans and not stolen by bots.
Something like this would be useful for TicketMaster and Orbitz. They could better protect their valuable content.
I see this as a GOOD thing, (Score:4, Interesting)
because it will shortly result in major advances in image recognition/parsing technology. I foresee a Firefox addon that will hide the 'ad-CAPTCHA', substituting a button for the user to click on. The CAPTCHA recognition process will happen transparently. Of course this will break CAPTCHA altogether, but we can lay that one at the feet of the advertising industry.
Never underestimate the power of a pissed-off programmer when faced with the 'all your eyeballs are belong to us' attitude of some arrogant advertising wonk.
Why I block Ad's (Score:3, Insightful)
I don't block ads because I hate ads, I block them because I hate These. [google.com]
I don't trust Ad firms. Especially when most of them will take anybody's money that waves in front of their face and distribute their infected Flash/JavaScript file without question, and the rest get tricked into running them. Considering that a rogueware firm can buy tons of ads with just one fake antivirus buy, I trust them even less.
The day ad firms decided to allow flash and scripts in ads was the day they asked to be blocked.
Add that to the list of failed business practices. (Score:3, Insightful)
Yeah, that’s likely to work out well in the end. Along with...
Ads
Flash ads
Popup ads
Ads
Goatse
Video ads
Flashing GIF ads
Ads
Goatse
Did I forget anything? (Probably. There are really too many to list.)
To view this page, please type the following:
Mmm yeah I love being anally raped! FUCK ME HARDER, DISNEY!
Well, that was disturbing. Enjoy the rest of your stay!
Note to Media companies: (Score:3, Insightful)
YOU ARE NOT THAT IMPORTANT.
If we're blocking your ads and you shove them down our throats, we simply won't visit. No biggie. The people who block ads have better things to do with their net usage than to fill out silly captchas just to get in.
Captchas as a means of fighting spam are already problematic and hostile to those with disabilities. To use them as a gateway is even more so.
Disney, you are not that important. Wrigley, you are not that important. The rest of you, you are not that important. It's no longer 1975 and everyone captive to 3 major television networks. We will go elsewhere.
Stop trying to shovel shit against the tide. You want us to see your ads? Stop them from being so obnoxious that we get so annoyed that we install the ad blockers. I will not punch your monkey.
Signed:
The smarter people of the Internet with disposable income.
Go ahead... (Score:3, Informative)